Chapter 402 - Declaring war against the entire insectoid race!
Chapter 402: Declaring war against the entire insectoid race!
Tantu’s face was livid. The moment he walked down the stairs, the more than ten thousand mantis soldiers under his command had essentially been massacred by Xia Fei. Even the military facilities in the encampment could not escape Xia Fei’s wrath. Thick and swelling smoke billowed everywhere along with the wails and cries of the warriors who were still alive.
It should be noted that, from the first sound of something going off to the time Tantu grabbed his equipment and made his way downstairs, barely a few minutes had passed!
In such a short timespan, this well-equipped military base had practically been completely destroyed! Such a speed and ruthlessness was simply unimaginable!
Composing himself, Tantu proceeded to bind the pair of green warswords in his arms.
The Unparalleled Viridian lacked sword grips and merely depended on the mechanical implement to integrate into the user’s arms. The mantis species already had arms that were as sharp as knives, and their fingers were like four daggers. They would normally wear gloves to avoid their sharp arms and fingers from hurting their fellow compatriots, which was a testament to the lethality their two hands possessed.
This pair of already powerful arms, now adding the top-rated green warswords, definitely added a substantial amount to Tantu’s combat strength as an insectoid martial arts expert.
From far away, Xia Fei was walking over at a calm and steady pace. His head was held high, his pair of eyes lacking any hint of emotions, looking like a machine made for killing.
Xia Fei ignored the endless chain of explosions and bright flames around him, his two eyes beholding just the green-skinned insectoid ahead of him, as well as the pair of colorful weapons he had in his hands.
Furball was perched on Xia Fei’s shoulder, the fur all over its body standing on end. A mantis soldier suddenly appeared from the ruins to the side, his hands propping a shoulder-mounted, anti-armor laser gun. He had it aimed at Xia Fei, ready to fire!
*Whoosh—*
Furball very easily spat a silver energy ball from its mouth. This projectile came floating out, all ethereal-like but at such speed that, before the soldier could pull the trigger, the energy ball about the size of a pingpong ball connected and turned the mantis into dust!
*Bang!*
Energy atoms imperceptible to the naked eye dissipated!
Furball sniffed at it for a moment before turning its head away in disdain. Though this elite beast was normally gluttonous, it was also very picky with the quality of the food it ingested. It did not care to spare even a second glance at these inferior energy atoms released.
“Tantu?” Xia Fei stopped about a ten-meter distance away from the insectoid and casually asked.
Xia Fei was extremely indifferent, as if he was not asking an expert but was petting a dog to see if it had eaten, instead.
“Are you looking for me, and who are you?! To actually dare barge into my encampment, you must be tired of living!” The incensed Tantu pointed toward Xia Fei with his arm.
Who knew that, not only would Xia Fei completely ignore him, he would even turn his head to Furball, which was still perched on his shoulder, and say, “Looks like this bug’s the one in charge here. I’ll kill him; don’t interfere.”
Furball looked very reluctant, sighing in disappointment.
The man and a ball appeared to be talking to themselves, not at all paying any attention to Tantu, treating the mantis insectoid as if he were already dead.
When had General Tantu ever experienced such a humiliation to this degree? He was an insectoid ranked eighty-seventh on the Sacred Warrior Leaderboard and someone who nearly became the vice guildmaster of the Sacred Guild back in the day. It was too bad that his personality was deemed too irascible, not garnering Uti’s favor, so he ended up being sent to this border region to take command of this insignificant border army.
Tantu was bellowing in his rage. He took a step back and adopted a stance as if he was about to charge forward, a murderous fighting will bursting out from every part of his body!
“This person looks to be at least fairly capable, better not get too carefless.” Phantom was beside Xia Fei, urgently issuing a warning to his ear.
Xia Fei nodded wordlessly, grasping October Flying Snow with a flipping of his palm.
The rime-frosted dagger let out waves of coldness. What should have been a fairly humid temperature slowly turned chilly as flakes of snow began gently falling mid-air.
Tantu crossed his two arms, interlacing the two green warswords as they let out a crisp, metallic ring.
Just as the sound cleared, Tantu’s figure abruptly moved!
He went for a vicious killing move the moment he acted; the sharp tip of his two swords were placed in front of his body, like a large pair of scissors, pouncing right at Xia Fei!
It must be said that Tantu possessed quite a decent speed as an illusive blade ability user. The mantis’s thin and long arms were not just sharp, but they also had an explosive strength that surpassed other species!
His two arms were like two coiled springs that went bounding outward at great speeds!
This was the illusive blade ability!
By utilizing a powerful explosive force, his arms’ quick movement conjured up afterimages, looking as if each was an illusion, but in fact, every blade was real! As long as any of these blades connected, the opponent would very easily find themselves unpredictably damaged!
The mantis species’ main style of attack relied on the impact from their two arms, which measured upward in the hundreds of tons. It was said that even a mantis youth could utilize their exceptional capacity to spring out their arms and shatter boulders weighing tens of thousands of catties with a single punch! As Tantu was an outstanding individual among his species, he was of course even able to smash steel balls into pieces with just one punch! With both an impressive strength and speed, the damage he could dish out was simply unimaginable!
Adding the fact that he had the pair of top-grade weapons, Unparalleled Viridian, attached to his two arms, and an Illusive Blade ability that he had cultivated to Legendary rank, all these factors meant that Tantu’s attacks possessed a destructive power and a swift momentum to boot!
The afterimages of his blades were coming at great alacrity, creating ear-splitting sounds as they came straight for Xia Fei!
Like a pack of ferocious wild beasts, bearing their fangs and maw as they sought to tear right into the biological creature before them!
What made it even more lethal was the fact that the afterimages were so closely packed they were as dense as torrential rain, appearing as if they sealed off any possible path before Xia Fei!
Tantu did not relax after executing this move, though. He had his arms cross once more to form the scissor posture, ready to launch a second round of attacks!
Illusive Blade was a purely offensive ability, and the higher the cultivation rank, the less time it would take to launch a follow-up attack, and the greater the frequency of the attack. Against such a brutal attack, which covered such a wide area, even an entire squad would have a hard time escaping it!
Xia Fei could instantly sense an invisible pressure the moment Tantu unleashed his attack, different from all the other opponents he had faced before. Tantu’s proficiency with his Illusive Blade ability had gotten to a stage where he was effectively flawless, and adding the fact that he was of the mantis species, which was already good at launching explosive attacks, it was no wonder Illusive Blade was several times even more powerful when he was the one using it! Even Xia Fei with his superspeed could not afford to be negligent.
Retreating his footsteps with haste, Xia Fei dodged the attack even as he observed Tantu’s moves with his two eyes, hoping to find a flaw so that he could analyze how to better mitigate the attack!
When facing a powerful foe, simply dodging would not be enough to achieve victory ultimately. It was like a challenge of sorts! Xia Fei, someone who could very clearly avoid the attack, chose to take on the incoming blade, instead! There was still a long road ahead of him, and if a foe who merely held the eighty-seventh position on the Sacred Warrior Leaderboard could stop Xia Fei, his future battles would only be even harder!
Gritting his teeth, Xia Fei’s figure evaded backward as fast as lightning. The afterimages of green blade followed closely, the attack momentum hardly letting up in the least!
The corners of Tantu’s mouth curled into a smirk. “You want to decipher my attack? In your dreams!”
*Ping!*
The two arms were thrust forward with great verve! Before the first round of attacks ended, the second, and even the third, peppered continuously!
Xia Fei knitted his eyebrows, his brain working on overdrive to calculate every angle of attacks the Illusive Blade was coming at him, including the various adaptations he could make with them.
There were certain types of people in this universe who would never lose their hope or their cool. Like the humble weed, they would live a simple yet hardy life, not once succumbing to negativity or becoming dispirited. Xia Fei was such a person.
Yujiang had left Xia Fei a fake message, telling him that Avril was already dead.
Having their beloved get brutally murdered would send any average person in a painful spiral, yet Xia Fei did not spend any time crying. Though his heart had experienced a shattering pain, he knew one thing very well: Crying would not bring someone back to life, and if Avril was in heaven looking down on how downtrodden he looked, she would also be unhappy, regretting that she had fallen in love with such a weak man.
Xia Fei would not want that to happen! He refused to become a man who made Avril regret! He would tell her in his own way that she had made the right choice with him!
Fresh blood and murder were the only way to pay homage to the grief and anger he was feeling, while crying would only be what weak men did!
If an enemy killed one’s beloved, should one not only fail to get revenge but also hide and cry in a corner? How could they face those who had died or even their manhood that way?
“I’ll never cry. The only one crying will be my enemies, and it shall be tears of blood that pour from their eyes.” Several days ago, when Phantom told Xia Fei that he would feel better if he cried some, that was Xia Fei’s response.
Right now, Xia Fei was using his actions to prove the oath he swore!
Revenge! A crazed vengeance! A reckless pursuit of retribution! That was the only thing Xia Fei wanted to do right now!
When Tantu’s flurry of blows came to bear like a torrential downpour, Xia Fei chose not to retreat but brace for the coming storm, instead!
Attempt a roundabout retaliation?
No! He wanted to destroy him head on! To utterly tear him apart!
With a sudden flash in his pupils, Xia Fei quickly realized that there was a tiny flaw amidst the countless flashes of Illusive Blade, and attempting to break through this tiny flaw would be impossible for the average human, but for someone that had mastered the crafty approach like Xia Fei, there was nothing that was impossible!
*Whoosh!*
After rapidly retreating several hundred meters, he was once again diving right into the dancing sword tips!
Tantu was surprised. His attack was flawless, and it was something that he had proven so many times before. In his past battles, no one had ever been able to pass through the wall of sword that his Illusive Blade created. He gloated to himself, believing that Xia Fei risking his life now would naturally result in his death.
However, he was no longer gleeful in the next second, for Xia Fei had managed to use his incredible physical agility to twist his body like a nimble arrow, passing through that wall of blades created by his warswords!
Tantu thought his attack was like a steel wall, which no one could get past, but he had forgotten that there was no wall that wind could not pass through, and Xia Fei was precisely that most penetrative and agile wind!
He panically unleashed his Illusive Blade ability three times, trying to stop Xia Fei from getting close to him by overwhelming the latter with quantity.
Unfortunately, since Xia Fei could break his first move, it naturally meant he could break the second, third, or even ten thousand of such!
When experts fought, the same move would only be effective once. That was a tried and true principle!
Though Tantu was strong, he lacked variation in terms of his moves, and the moment Xia Fei discovered that flaw, defeat was all but decided!
Tantu felt a disappointment like he had never felt before. The ultimate move that brought him to fame had been broken, and that was an even greater mental pressure than immediately dying!
Xia Fei passed through layers upon layers of defense like a ghost until he was right in front of Tantu. Meanwhile. Tantu’s face was already ghastly, and Xia Fei had completely ruined any bit of confidence he had in resisting!
This was an overwhelming victory!
Tantu had already given his all, but he was unable to even harm Xia Fei in the least, while Xia Fei had yet to make a move of his own since they first engaged in combat.
*Tssch.*
Xia Fei’s move was simple but also very savage! October Flying Snow instantly slashed Tantu’s head as if he were slaughtering a pig—simple and brutal!
He lifted that green head of Tantu’s and leaped to the highest roof in the military encampment with a light tap of his foot. He then skewered Tantu’s head right onto a lightning rod!
He knew clearly that, right at this moment, there were numerous monitoring devices inside and outside this military encampment aimed at him. It would not be long before the entire insectoid race would see this bloody sight, letting them all see Xia Fei kill a Sacred Warrior whom they held in great esteem in such a nasty and imprudent manner!
The corner of his mouth curved sinisterly. Xia Fei pointed his middle finger to a nearby monitoring device.
Without a doubt, what he had just done was reckless. In fact, it was insane!
He was declaring war against the entire insectoid race!